Coal pollution grips coastal Bangladesh as safeguards fail

[u/Shot-Addendum-809]

"A review of Payra’s stack emissions test documents from 2021 to 2025 shows the Department of Environment’s (DoE) Barishal Divisional Office never once carried out a stack emission test. For ambient air quality, only suspended particulate matter was checked with any regularity; sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides were tested just once, in 2021.

And that year’s results were hardly reassuring: One reading put particulate matter at 310 micrograms per cubic meter, well above the 200- μg/m³ standard. A second test on Oct. 24, 2021, recorded 188.12 μg/m³ — still close to the limit — with officials noting the test had been conducted in “half-rainy weather”.

The reason for the gap, according to the Barishal office’s senior chemist, Md Golam Kibria, is straightforward: “The office simply cannot do the work.”

“We have a mandate for air, sound and liquid quality tests. But in our laboratory in Barishal, we cannot test air and liquid, though it is mandatory to test them twice a year,” Kibria says."

https://www.eco-business.com/news/coal-pollution-grips-coastal-bangladesh-as-safeguards-fail/